# man > wget(1)
> **TLDR:** Download files from the Web.
>
- Download the contents of a URL to a file (named "foo" in this case):
`wget {{https://example.com/foo}}`
- Download the contents of a URL to a file (named "bar" in this case):
`wget {{-O|--output-document}} {{bar}} {{https://example.com/foo}}`
- Download a single web page and all its resources with 3-second intervals between requests (scripts, stylesheets, images, etc.):
`wget {{-pkw|--page-requisites --convert-links --wait}} 3 {{https://example.com/some_page.html}}`
- Download all listed files within a directory and its sub-directories (does not download embedded page elements):
`wget {{-mnp|--mirror --no-parent}} {{https://example.com/some_path/}}`
- Limit the download speed and the number of connection retries:
`wget --limit-rate {{300k}} {{-t|--tries}} {{100}} {{https://example.com/some_path/}}`
- Download a file from an HTTP server using Basic Auth (also works for FTP):
`wget --user {{username}} --password {{password}} {{https://example.com}}`
- Continue an incomplete download:
`wget {{-c|--continue}} {{https://example.com}}`
- Download all URLs stored in a text file to a specific directory:
`wget {{-P|--directory-prefix}} {{path/to/directory}} {{-i|--input-file}} {{path/to/URLs.txt}}`
*Source: tldr-pages*
---
[_WGET_(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/WGET/1/markdown) GNU Wget [_WGET_(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/WGET/1/markdown)
## NAME
Wget - The non-interactive network downloader.
## SYNOPSIS
wget [_option_]... [_URL_]...
## DESCRIPTION
GNU Wget is a free utility for non-interactive download of files from the Web. It supports
HTTP, HTTPS, and FTP protocols, as well as retrieval through HTTP proxies.
Wget is non-interactive, meaning that it can work in the background, while the user is not
logged on. This allows you to start a retrieval and disconnect from the system, letting Wget
finish the work. By contrast, most of the Web browsers require constant user's presence,
which can be a great hindrance when transferring a lot of data.
Wget can follow links in HTML, XHTML, and CSS pages, to create local versions of remote web
sites, fully recreating the directory structure of the original site. This is sometimes
referred to as "recursive downloading." While doing that, Wget respects the Robot Exclusion
Standard (_/robots.txt_). Wget can be instructed to convert the links in downloaded files to
point at the local files, for offline viewing.
Wget has been designed for robustness over slow or unstable network connections; if a
download fails due to a network problem, it will keep retrying until the whole file has been
retrieved. If the server supports regetting, it will instruct the server to continue the
download from where it left off.
## OPTIONS
### Option Syntax
Since Wget uses GNU getopt to process command-line arguments, every option has a long form
along with the short one. Long options are more convenient to remember, but take time to
type. You may freely mix different option styles, or specify options after the command-line
arguments. Thus you may write:
wget -r --tries=10 -o log
The space between the option accepting an argument and the argument may be omitted. Instead
of **-o log **you can write **-olog**.
You may put several options that do not require arguments together, like:
wget -drc
This is completely equivalent to:
wget -d -r -c
Since the options can be specified after the arguments, you may terminate them with **--**. So
the following will try to download URL **-x**, reporting failure to _log_:
wget -o log -- -x
The options that accept comma-separated lists all respect the convention that specifying an
empty list clears its value. This can be useful to clear the _.wgetrc_ settings. For
instance, if your _.wgetrc_ sets "exclude_directories" to _/cgi-bin_, the following example will
first reset it, and then set it to exclude _/~nobody_ and _/~somebody_. You can also clear the
lists in _.wgetrc_.
wget -X "" -X /~nobody,/~somebody
Most options that do not accept arguments are _boolean_ options, so named because their state
can be captured with a yes-or-no ("boolean") variable. For example, **--follow-ftp **tells Wget
to follow FTP links from HTML files and, on the other hand, **--no-glob **tells it not to perform
file globbing on FTP URLs. A boolean option is either _affirmative_ or _negative_ (beginning
with **--no**). All such options share several properties.
Unless stated otherwise, it is assumed that the default behavior is the opposite of what the
option accomplishes. For example, the documented existence of **--follow-ftp **assumes that the
default is to _not_ follow FTP links from HTML pages.
Affirmative options can be negated by prepending the **--no- **to the option name; negative
options can be negated by omitting the **--no- **prefix. This might seem superfluous---if the
default for an affirmative option is to not do something, then why provide a way to
explicitly turn it off? But the startup file may in fact change the default. For instance,
using "follow_ftp = on" in _.wgetrc_ makes Wget _follow_ FTP links by default, and using
**--no-follow-ftp **is the only way to restore the factory default from the command line.
### Basic Startup Options
### -V
### --version
Display the version of Wget.
### -h
### --help
Print a help message describing all of Wget's command-line options.
### -b
### --background
Go to background immediately after startup. If no output file is specified via the **-o**,
output is redirected to _wget-log_.
### -e _
**--execute _**command_
Execute _command_ as if it were a part of _.wgetrc_. A command thus invoked will be executed
_after_ the commands in _.wgetrc_, thus taking precedence over them. If you need to specify
more than one wgetrc command, use multiple instances of **-e**.
### Logging and Input File Options
### -o _
**--output-file=_**logfile_
Log all messages to _logfile_. The messages are normally reported to standard error.
### -a _
**--append-output=_**logfile_
Append to _logfile_. This is the same as **-o**, only it appends to _logfile_ instead of
overwriting the old log file. If _logfile_ does not exist, a new file is created.
### -d
### --debug
Turn on debug output, meaning various information important to the developers of Wget if
it does not work properly. Your system administrator may have chosen to compile Wget
without debug support, in which case **-d **will not work. Please note that compiling with
debug support is always safe---Wget compiled with the debug support will _not_ print any
debug info unless requested with **-d**.
### -q
### --quiet
Turn off Wget's output.
### -v
### --verbose
Turn on verbose output, with all the available data. The default output is verbose.
### -nv
### --no-verbose
Turn off verbose without being completely quiet (use **-q **for that), which means that error
messages and basic information still get printed.
**--report-speed=_**type_
Output bandwidth as _type_. The only accepted value is **bits**.
### -i _
**--input-file=_**file_
Read URLs from a local or external _file_. If **- **is specified as _file_, URLs are read from
the standard input. (Use **./- **to read from a file literally named **-**.)
If this function is used, no URLs need be present on the command line. If there are URLs
both on the command line and in an input file, those on the command lines will be the
first ones to be retrieved. If **--force-html **is not specified, then _file_ should consist
of a series of URLs, one per line.
However, if you specify **--force-html**, the document will be regarded as **html**. In that
case you may have problems with relative links, which you can solve either by adding
"" to the documents or by specifying **--base=_**url_ on the command line.
If the _file_ is an external one, the document will be automatically treated as **html **if the
Content-Type matches **text/html**. Furthermore, the _file_'s location will be implicitly used
as base href if none was specified.
**--input-metalink=_**file_
Downloads files covered in local Metalink _file_. Metalink version 3 and 4 are supported.
### --keep-badhash
Keeps downloaded Metalink's files with a bad hash. It appends .badhash to the name of
Metalink's files which have a checksum mismatch, except without overwriting existing
files.
### --metalink-over-http
Issues HTTP HEAD request instead of GET and extracts Metalink metadata from response
headers. Then it switches to Metalink download. If no valid Metalink metadata is found,
it falls back to ordinary HTTP download. Enables **Content-Type: application/metalink4+xml**
files download/processing.
**--metalink-index=_**number_
Set the Metalink **application/metalink4+xml **metaurl ordinal NUMBER. From 1 to the total
number of "application/metalink4+xml" available. Specify 0 or **inf **to choose the first
good one. Metaurls, such as those from a **--metalink-over-http**, may have been sorted by
priority key's value; keep this in mind to choose the right NUMBER.
### --preferred-location
Set preferred location for Metalink resources. This has effect if multiple resources with
same priority are available.
### --xattr
Enable use of file system's extended attributes to save the original URL and the Referer
HTTP header value if used.
Be aware that the URL might contain private information like access tokens or
credentials.
### -F
### --force-html
When input is read from a file, force it to be treated as an HTML file. This enables you
to retrieve relative links from existing HTML files on your local disk, by adding "" to HTML, or using the **--base **command-line option.
### -B _
**--base=_**URL_
Resolves relative links using _URL_ as the point of reference, when reading links from an
HTML file specified via the **-i**/**--input-file **option (together with **--force-html**, or when
the input file was fetched remotely from a server describing it as HTML). This is
equivalent to the presence of a "BASE" tag in the HTML input file, with _URL_ as the value
for the "href" attribute.
For instance, if you specify ** **for _URL_, and Wget reads **../baz/b.html**
from the input file, it would be resolved to ****.
**--config=_**FILE_
Specify the location of a startup file you wish to use instead of the default one(s). Use
--no-config to disable reading of config files. If both --config and --no-config are
given, --no-config is ignored.
**--rejected-log=_**logfile_
Logs all URL rejections to _logfile_ as comma separated values. The values include the
reason of rejection, the URL and the parent URL it was found in.
### Download Options
**--bind-address=_**ADDRESS_
When making client TCP/IP connections, bind to _ADDRESS_ on the local machine. _ADDRESS_ may
be specified as a hostname or IP address. This option can be useful if your machine is
bound to multiple IPs.
**--bind-dns-address=_**ADDRESS_
[libcares only] This address overrides the route for DNS requests. If you ever need to
circumvent the standard settings from /etc/resolv.conf, this option together with
**--dns-servers **is your friend. _ADDRESS_ must be specified either as IPv4 or IPv6 address.
Wget needs to be built with libcares for this option to be available.
**--dns-servers=_**ADDRESSES_
[libcares only] The given address(es) override the standard nameserver addresses, e.g.
as configured in /etc/resolv.conf. _ADDRESSES_ may be specified either as IPv4 or IPv6
addresses, comma-separated. Wget needs to be built with libcares for this option to be
available.
### -t _
**--tries=_**number_
Set number of tries to _number_. Specify 0 or **inf **for infinite retrying. The default is to
retry 20 times, with the exception of fatal errors like "connection refused" or "not
found" (404), which are not retried.
### -O _
**--output-document=_**file_
The documents will not be written to the appropriate files, but all will be concatenated
together and written to _file_. If **- **is used as _file_, documents will be printed to
standard output, disabling link conversion. (Use **./- **to print to a file literally named
**-**.)
Use of **-O **is _not_ intended to mean simply "use the name _file_ instead of the one in the
URL;" rather, it is analogous to shell redirection: **wget -O file **is intended
to work like **wget -O - > file**; _file_ will be truncated immediately, and _all_
downloaded content will be written there.
For this reason, **-N **(for timestamp-checking) is not supported in combination with **-O**:
since _file_ is always newly created, it will always have a very new timestamp. A warning
will be issued if this combination is used.
Similarly, using **-r **or **-p **with **-O **may not work as you expect: Wget won't just download
the first file to _file_ and then download the rest to their normal names: _all_ downloaded
content will be placed in _file_. This was disabled in version 1.11, but has been
reinstated (with a warning) in 1.11.2, as there are some cases where this behavior can
actually have some use.
A combination with **-nc **is only accepted if the given output file does not exist.
Note that a combination with **-k **is only permitted when downloading a single document, as
in that case it will just convert all relative URIs to external ones; **-k **makes no sense
for multiple URIs when they're all being downloaded to a single file; **-k **can be used only
when the output is a regular file.
### -nc
### --no-clobber
If a file is downloaded more than once in the same directory, Wget's behavior depends on
a few options, including **-nc**. In certain cases, the local file will be _clobbered_, or
overwritten, upon repeated download. In other cases it will be preserved.
When running Wget without **-N**, **-nc**, **-r**, or **-p**, downloading the same file in the same
directory will result in the original copy of _file_ being preserved and the second copy
being named _file_**.1**. If that file is downloaded yet again, the third copy will be named
_file_**.2**, and so on. (This is also the behavior with **-nd**, even if **-r **or **-p **are in effect.)
When **-nc **is specified, this behavior is suppressed, and Wget will refuse to download
newer copies of _file_. Therefore, ""no-clobber"" is actually a misnomer in this
mode---it's not clobbering that's prevented (as the numeric suffixes were already
preventing clobbering), but rather the multiple version saving that's prevented.
When running Wget with **-r **or **-p**, but without **-N**, **-nd**, or **-nc**, re-downloading a file will
result in the new copy simply overwriting the old. Adding **-nc **will prevent this
behavior, instead causing the original version to be preserved and any newer copies on
the server to be ignored.
When running Wget with **-N**, with or without **-r **or **-p**, the decision as to whether or not to
download a newer copy of a file depends on the local and remote timestamp and size of the
file. **-nc **may not be specified at the same time as **-N**.
A combination with **-O**/**--output-document **is only accepted if the given output file does
not exist.
Note that when **-nc **is specified, files with the suffixes **.html **or **.htm **will be loaded
from the local disk and parsed as if they had been retrieved from the Web.
**--backups=_**backups_
Before (over)writing a file, back up an existing file by adding a **.1 **suffix (**_1 **on VMS)
to the file name. Such backup files are rotated to **.2**, **.3**, and so on, up to _backups_ (and
lost beyond that).
### --no-netrc
Do not try to obtain credentials from _.netrc_ file. By default _.netrc_ file is searched for
credentials in case none have been passed on command line and authentication is required.
### -c
### --continue
Continue getting a partially-downloaded file. This is useful when you want to finish up
a download started by a previous instance of Wget, or by another program. For instance:
wget -c ftp://sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk/ls-lR.Z
If there is a file named _ls-lR.Z_ in the current directory, Wget will assume that it is
the first portion of the remote file, and will ask the server to continue the retrieval
from an offset equal to the length of the local file.
Note that you don't need to specify this option if you just want the current invocation
of Wget to retry downloading a file should the connection be lost midway through. This
is the default behavior. **-c **only affects resumption of downloads started _prior_ to this
invocation of Wget, and whose local files are still sitting around.
Without **-c**, the previous example would just download the remote file to _ls-lR.Z.1_,
leaving the truncated _ls-lR.Z_ file alone.
If you use **-c **on a non-empty file, and the server does not support continued downloading,
Wget will restart the download from scratch and overwrite the existing file entirely.
Beginning with Wget 1.7, if you use **-c **on a file which is of equal size as the one on the
server, Wget will refuse to download the file and print an explanatory message. The same
happens when the file is smaller on the server than locally (presumably because it was
changed on the server since your last download attempt)---because "continuing" is not
meaningful, no download occurs.
On the other side of the coin, while using **-c**, any file that's bigger on the server than
locally will be considered an incomplete download and only "(length(remote) -
length(local))" bytes will be downloaded and tacked onto the end of the local file. This
behavior can be desirable in certain cases---for instance, you can use **wget -c **to
download just the new portion that's been appended to a data collection or log file.
However, if the file is bigger on the server because it's been _changed_, as opposed to
just _appended_ to, you'll end up with a garbled file. Wget has no way of verifying that
the local file is really a valid prefix of the remote file. You need to be especially
careful of this when using **-c **in conjunction with **-r**, since every file will be considered
as an "incomplete download" candidate.
Another instance where you'll get a garbled file if you try to use **-c **is if you have a
lame HTTP proxy that inserts a "transfer interrupted" string into the local file. In the
future a "rollback" option may be added to deal with this case.
Note that **-c **only works with FTP servers and with HTTP servers that support the "Range"
header.
**--start-pos=_**OFFSET_
Start downloading at zero-based position _OFFSET_. Offset may be expressed in bytes,
kilobytes with the `k' suffix, or megabytes with the `m' suffix, etc.
**--start-pos **has higher precedence over **--continue**. When **--start-pos **and **--continue **are
both specified, wget will emit a warning then proceed as if **--continue **was absent.
Server support for continued download is required, otherwise **--start-pos **cannot help.
See **-c **for details.
**--progress=_**type_
Select the type of the progress indicator you wish to use. Legal indicators are "dot"
and "bar".
The "bar" indicator is used by default. It draws an ASCII progress bar graphics (a.k.a
"thermometer" display) indicating the status of retrieval. If the output is not a TTY,
the "dot" bar will be used by default.
Use **--progress=dot **to switch to the "dot" display. It traces the retrieval by printing
dots on the screen, each dot representing a fixed amount of downloaded data.
The progress _type_ can also take one or more parameters. The parameters vary based on the
_type_ selected. Parameters to _type_ are passed by appending them to the type sperated by a
colon (:) like this: **--progress=_**type_**:_**parameter1_**:_**parameter2_.
When using the dotted retrieval, you may set the _style_ by specifying the type as
**dot:_**style_. Different styles assign different meaning to one dot. With the "default"
style each dot represents 1K, there are ten dots in a cluster and 50 dots in a line. The
"binary" style has a more "computer"-like orientation---8K dots, 16-dots clusters and 48
dots per line (which makes for 384K lines). The "mega" style is suitable for downloading
large files---each dot represents 64K retrieved, there are eight dots in a cluster, and
48 dots on each line (so each line contains 3M). If "mega" is not enough then you can
use the "giga" style---each dot represents 1M retrieved, there are eight dots in a
cluster, and 32 dots on each line (so each line contains 32M).
With **--progress=bar**, there are currently two possible parameters, _force_ and _noscroll_.
When the output is not a TTY, the progress bar always falls back to "dot", even if
**--progress=bar **was passed to Wget during invocation. This behaviour can be overridden and
the "bar" output forced by using the "force" parameter as **--progress=bar:force**.
By default, the **bar **style progress bar scroll the name of the file from left to right for
the file being downloaded if the filename exceeds the maximum length allotted for its
display. In certain cases, such as with **--progress=bar:force**, one may not want the
scrolling filename in the progress bar. By passing the "noscroll" parameter, Wget can be
forced to display as much of the filename as possible without scrolling through it.
Note that you can set the default style using the "progress" command in _.wgetrc_. That
setting may be overridden from the command line. For example, to force the bar output
without scrolling, use **--progress=bar:force:noscroll**.
### --show-progress
Force wget to display the progress bar in any verbosity.
By default, wget only displays the progress bar in verbose mode. One may however, want
wget to display the progress bar on screen in conjunction with any other verbosity modes
like **--no-verbose **or **--quiet**. This is often a desired a property when invoking wget to
download several small/large files. In such a case, wget could simply be invoked with
this parameter to get a much cleaner output on the screen.
This option will also force the progress bar to be printed to _stderr_ when used alongside
the **--output-file **option.
### -N
### --timestamping
Turn on time-stamping.
### --no-if-modified-since
Do not send If-Modified-Since header in **-N **mode. Send preliminary HEAD request instead.
This has only effect in **-N **mode.
### --no-use-server-timestamps
Don't set the local file's timestamp by the one on the server.
By default, when a file is downloaded, its timestamps are set to match those from the
remote file. This allows the use of **--timestamping **on subsequent invocations of wget.
However, it is sometimes useful to base the local file's timestamp on when it was
actually downloaded; for that purpose, the **--no-use-server-timestamps **option has been
provided.
### -S
### --server-response
Print the headers sent by HTTP servers and responses sent by FTP servers.
### --spider
When invoked with this option, Wget will behave as a Web _spider_, which means that it will
not download the pages, just check that they are there. For example, you can use Wget to
check your bookmarks:
wget --spider --force-html -i bookmarks.html
This feature needs much more work for Wget to get close to the functionality of real web
spiders.
### -T seconds
**--timeout=_**seconds_
Set the network timeout to _seconds_ seconds. This is equivalent to specifying
**--dns-timeout**, **--connect-timeout**, and **--read-timeout**, all at the same time.
When interacting with the network, Wget can check for timeout and abort the operation if
it takes too long. This prevents anomalies like hanging reads and infinite connects.
The only timeout enabled by default is a 900-second read timeout. Setting a timeout to 0
disables it altogether. Unless you know what you are doing, it is best not to change the
default timeout settings.
All timeout-related options accept decimal values, as well as subsecond values. For
example, **0.1 **seconds is a legal (though unwise) choice of timeout. Subsecond timeouts
are useful for checking server response times or for testing network latency.
**--dns-timeout=_**seconds_
Set the DNS lookup timeout to _seconds_ seconds. DNS lookups that don't complete within
the specified time will fail. By default, there is no timeout on DNS lookups, other than
that implemented by system libraries.
**--connect-timeout=_**seconds_
Set the connect timeout to _seconds_ seconds. TCP connections that take longer to
establish will be aborted. By default, there is no connect timeout, other than that
implemented by system libraries.
**--read-timeout=_**seconds_
Set the read (and write) timeout to _seconds_ seconds. The "time" of this timeout refers
to _idle_ _time_: if, at any point in the download, no data is received for more than the
specified number of seconds, reading fails and the download is restarted. This option
does not directly affect the duration of the entire download.
Of course, the remote server may choose to terminate the connection sooner than this
option requires. The default read timeout is 900 seconds.
**--limit-rate=_**amount_
Limit the download speed to _amount_ bytes per second. Amount may be expressed in bytes,
kilobytes with the **k **suffix, or megabytes with the **m **suffix. For example,
**--limit-rate=20k **will limit the retrieval rate to 20KB/s. This is useful when, for
whatever reason, you don't want Wget to consume the entire available bandwidth.
This option allows the use of decimal numbers, usually in conjunction with power
suffixes; for example, **--limit-rate=2.5k **is a legal value.
Note that Wget implements the limiting by sleeping the appropriate amount of time after a
network read that took less time than specified by the rate. Eventually this strategy
causes the TCP transfer to slow down to approximately the specified rate. However, it
may take some time for this balance to be achieved, so don't be surprised if limiting the
rate doesn't work well with very small files.
### -w _
**--wait=_**seconds_
Wait the specified number of seconds between the retrievals. Use of this option is
recommended, as it lightens the server load by making the requests less frequent.
Instead of in seconds, the time can be specified in minutes using the "m" suffix, in
hours using "h" suffix, or in days using "d" suffix.
Specifying a large value for this option is useful if the network or the destination host
is down, so that Wget can wait long enough to reasonably expect the network error to be
fixed before the retry. The waiting interval specified by this function is influenced by
"--random-wait", which see.
**--waitretry=_**seconds_
If you don't want Wget to wait between _every_ retrieval, but only between retries of
failed downloads, you can use this option. Wget will use _linear_ _backoff_, waiting 1
second after the first failure on a given file, then waiting 2 seconds after the second
failure on that file, up to the maximum number of _seconds_ you specify.
By default, Wget will assume a value of 10 seconds.
### --random-wait
Some web sites may perform log analysis to identify retrieval programs such as Wget by
looking for statistically significant similarities in the time between requests. This
option causes the time between requests to vary between 0.5 and 1.5 * _wait_ seconds, where
_wait_ was specified using the **--wait **option, in order to mask Wget's presence from such
analysis.
A 2001 article in a publication devoted to development on a popular consumer platform
provided code to perform this analysis on the fly. Its author suggested blocking at the
class C address level to ensure automated retrieval programs were blocked despite
changing DHCP-supplied addresses.
The **--random-wait **option was inspired by this ill-advised recommendation to block many
unrelated users from a web site due to the actions of one.
### --no-proxy
Don't use proxies, even if the appropriate *_proxy environment variable is defined.
### -Q _
**--quota=_**quota_
Specify download quota for automatic retrievals. The value can be specified in bytes
(default), kilobytes (with **k **suffix), or megabytes (with **m **suffix).
Note that quota will never affect downloading a single file. So if you specify **wget**
**-Q10k **, all of the _ls-lR.gz_ will be downloaded. The same
goes even when several URLs are specified on the command-line. The quota is checked only
at the end of each downloaded file, so it will never result in a partially downloaded
file. Thus you may safely type **wget -Q2m -i sites**---download will be aborted after the
file that exhausts the quota is completely downloaded.
Setting quota to 0 or to **inf **unlimits the download quota.
### --no-dns-cache
Turn off caching of DNS lookups. Normally, Wget remembers the IP addresses it looked up
from DNS so it doesn't have to repeatedly contact the DNS server for the same (typically
small) set of hosts it retrieves from. This cache exists in memory only; a new Wget run
will contact DNS again.
However, it has been reported that in some situations it is not desirable to cache host
names, even for the duration of a short-running application like Wget. With this option
Wget issues a new DNS lookup (more precisely, a new call to "gethostbyname" or
"getaddrinfo") each time it makes a new connection. Please note that this option will
_not_ affect caching that might be performed by the resolving library or by an external
caching layer, such as NSCD.
If you don't understand exactly what this option does, you probably won't need it.
**--restrict-file-names=_**modes_
Change which characters found in remote URLs must be escaped during generation of local
filenames. Characters that are _restricted_ by this option are escaped, i.e. replaced with
**%HH**, where **HH **is the hexadecimal number that corresponds to the restricted character.
This option may also be used to force all alphabetical cases to be either lower- or
uppercase.
By default, Wget escapes the characters that are not valid or safe as part of file names
on your operating system, as well as control characters that are typically unprintable.
This option is useful for changing these defaults, perhaps because you are downloading to
a non-native partition, or because you want to disable escaping of the control
characters, or you want to further restrict characters to only those in the ASCII range
of values.
The _modes_ are a comma-separated set of text values. The acceptable values are **unix**,
**windows**, **nocontrol**, **ascii**, **lowercase**, and **uppercase**. The values **unix **and **windows **are
mutually exclusive (one will override the other), as are **lowercase **and **uppercase**. Those
last are special cases, as they do not change the set of characters that would be
escaped, but rather force local file paths to be converted either to lower- or uppercase.
When "unix" is specified, Wget escapes the character **/ **and the control characters in the
ranges 0--31 and 128--159. This is the default on Unix-like operating systems.
When "windows" is given, Wget escapes the characters **\**, **|**, **/**, **:**, **?**, **"**, *****, **<**, **>**, and the
control characters in the ranges 0--31 and 128--159. In addition to this, Wget in
Windows mode uses **+ **instead of **: **to separate host and port in local file names, and uses
**@ **instead of **? **to separate the query portion of the file name from the rest. Therefore,
a URL that would be saved as **www.xemacs.org:4300/search.pl?input=blah **in Unix mode would
be saved as **www.xemacs.org+4300/search.pl@input=blah **in Windows mode. This mode is the
default on Windows.
If you specify **nocontrol**, then the escaping of the control characters is also switched
off. This option may make sense when you are downloading URLs whose names contain UTF-8
characters, on a system which can save and display filenames in UTF-8 (some possible byte
values used in UTF-8 byte sequences fall in the range of values designated by Wget as
"controls").
The **ascii **mode is used to specify that any bytes whose values are outside the range of
ASCII characters (that is, greater than 127) shall be escaped. This can be useful when
saving filenames whose encoding does not match the one used locally.
### -4
### --inet4-only
### -6
### --inet6-only
Force connecting to IPv4 or IPv6 addresses. With **--inet4-only **or **-4**, Wget will only
connect to IPv4 hosts, ignoring AAAA records in DNS, and refusing to connect to IPv6
addresses specified in URLs. Conversely, with **--inet6-only **or **-6**, Wget will only connect
to IPv6 hosts and ignore A records and IPv4 addresses.
Neither options should be needed normally. By default, an IPv6-aware Wget will use the
address family specified by the host's DNS record. If the DNS responds with both IPv4
and IPv6 addresses, Wget will try them in sequence until it finds one it can connect to.
(Also see "--prefer-family" option described below.)
These options can be used to deliberately force the use of IPv4 or IPv6 address families
on dual family systems, usually to aid debugging or to deal with broken network
configuration. Only one of **--inet6-only **and **--inet4-only **may be specified at the same
time. Neither option is available in Wget compiled without IPv6 support.
### --prefer-family=none/IPv4/IPv6
When given a choice of several addresses, connect to the addresses with specified address
family first. The address order returned by DNS is used without change by default.
This avoids spurious errors and connect attempts when accessing hosts that resolve to
both IPv6 and IPv4 addresses from IPv4 networks. For example, **www.kame.net **resolves to
**2001:200:0:8002:203:47ff:fea5:3085 **and to **203.178.141.194**. When the preferred family is
"IPv4", the IPv4 address is used first; when the preferred family is "IPv6", the IPv6
address is used first; if the specified value is "none", the address order returned by
DNS is used without change.
Unlike **-4 **and **-6**, this option doesn't inhibit access to any address family, it only
changes the _order_ in which the addresses are accessed. Also note that the reordering
performed by this option is _stable_---it doesn't affect order of addresses of the same
family. That is, the relative order of all IPv4 addresses and of all IPv6 addresses
remains intact in all cases.
### --retry-connrefused
Consider "connection refused" a transient error and try again. Normally Wget gives up on
a URL when it is unable to connect to the site because failure to connect is taken as a
sign that the server is not running at all and that retries would not help. This option
is for mirroring unreliable sites whose servers tend to disappear for short periods of
time.
**--user=_**user_
**--password=_**password_
Specify the username _user_ and password _password_ for both FTP and HTTP file retrieval.
These parameters can be overridden using the **--ftp-user **and **--ftp-password **options for
FTP connections and the **--http-user **and **--http-password **options for HTTP connections.
### --ask-password
Prompt for a password for each connection established. Cannot be specified when
**--password **is being used, because they are mutually exclusive.
**--use-askpass=_**command_
Prompt for a user and password using the specified command. If no command is specified
then the command in the environment variable WGET_ASKPASS is used. If WGET_ASKPASS is
not set then the command in the environment variable SSH_ASKPASS is used.
You can set the default command for use-askpass in the _.wgetrc_. That setting may be
overridden from the command line.
### --no-iri
Turn off internationalized URI (IRI) support. Use **--iri **to turn it on. IRI support is
activated by default.
You can set the default state of IRI support using the "iri" command in _.wgetrc_. That
setting may be overridden from the command line.
**--local-encoding=_**encoding_
Force Wget to use _encoding_ as the default system encoding. That affects how Wget converts
URLs specified as arguments from locale to UTF-8 for IRI support.
Wget use the function nl_langinfo() and then the "CHARSET" environment variable to get
the locale. If it fails, ASCII is used.
You can set the default local encoding using the "local_encoding" command in _.wgetrc_.
That setting may be overridden from the command line.
**--remote-encoding=_**encoding_
Force Wget to use _encoding_ as the default remote server encoding. That affects how Wget
converts URIs found in files from remote encoding to UTF-8 during a recursive fetch. This
options is only useful for IRI support, for the interpretation of non-ASCII characters.
For HTTP, remote encoding can be found in HTTP "Content-Type" header and in HTML
"Content-Type http-equiv" meta tag.
You can set the default encoding using the "remoteencoding" command in _.wgetrc_. That
setting may be overridden from the command line.
### --unlink
Force Wget to unlink file instead of clobbering existing file. This option is useful for
downloading to the directory with hardlinks.
### Directory Options
### -nd
### --no-directories
Do not create a hierarchy of directories when retrieving recursively. With this option
turned on, all files will get saved to the current directory, without clobbering (if a
name shows up more than once, the filenames will get extensions **.n**).
### -x
### --force-directories
The opposite of **-nd**---create a hierarchy of directories, even if one would not have been
created otherwise. E.g. **wget -x **will save the
downloaded file to _fly.srk.fer.hr/robots.txt_.
### -nH
### --no-host-directories
Disable generation of host-prefixed directories. By default, invoking Wget with **-r**
** **will create a structure of directories beginning with
_fly.srk.fer.hr/_. This option disables such behavior.
### --protocol-directories
Use the protocol name as a directory component of local file names. For example, with
this option, **wget -r http://_**host_ will save to **http/_**host_**/... **rather than just to _host_**/...**.
**--cut-dirs=_**number_
Ignore _number_ directory components. This is useful for getting a fine-grained control
over the directory where recursive retrieval will be saved.
Take, for example, the directory at **ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/**. If you retrieve it
with **-r**, it will be saved locally under _ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/_. While the **-nH **option
can remove the _ftp.xemacs.org/_ part, you are still stuck with _pub/xemacs_. This is where
**--cut-dirs **comes in handy; it makes Wget not "see" _number_ remote directory components.
Here are several examples of how **--cut-dirs **option works.
No options -> ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/
-nH -> pub/xemacs/
-nH --cut-dirs=1 -> xemacs/
-nH --cut-dirs=2 -> .
--cut-dirs=1 -> ftp.xemacs.org/xemacs/
...
If you just want to get rid of the directory structure, this option is similar to a
combination of **-nd **and **-P**. However, unlike **-nd**, **--cut-dirs **does not lose with
subdirectories---for instance, with **-nH --cut-dirs=1**, a _beta/_ subdirectory will be placed
to _xemacs/beta_, as one would expect.
### -P _
**--directory-prefix=_**prefix_
Set directory prefix to _prefix_. The _directory_ _prefix_ is the directory where all other
files and subdirectories will be saved to, i.e. the top of the retrieval tree. The
default is **. **(the current directory).
### HTTP Options
**--default-page=_**name_
Use _name_ as the default file name when it isn't known (i.e., for URLs that end in a
slash), instead of _index.html_.
### -E
### --adjust-extension
If a file of type **application/xhtml+xml **or **text/html **is downloaded and the URL does not
end with the regexp **\.[Hh][Tt][Mm][Ll]?**, this option will cause the suffix **.html **to be
appended to the local filename. This is useful, for instance, when you're mirroring a
remote site that uses **.asp **pages, but you want the mirrored pages to be viewable on your
stock Apache server. Another good use for this is when you're downloading CGI-generated
materials. A URL like ** **will be saved as
_article.cgi?25.html_.
Note that filenames changed in this way will be re-downloaded every time you re-mirror a
site, because Wget can't tell that the local _X.html_ file corresponds to remote URL _X_
(since it doesn't yet know that the URL produces output of type **text/html **or
**application/xhtml+xml**.
As of version 1.12, Wget will also ensure that any downloaded files of type **text/css **end
in the suffix **.css**, and the option was renamed from **--html-extension**, to better reflect
its new behavior. The old option name is still acceptable, but should now be considered
deprecated.
As of version 1.19.2, Wget will also ensure that any downloaded files with a
"Content-Encoding" of **br**, **compress**, **deflate **or **gzip **end in the suffix **.br**, **.Z**, **.zlib **and
**.gz **respectively.
At some point in the future, this option may well be expanded to include suffixes for
other types of content, including content types that are not parsed by Wget.
**--http-user=_**user_
**--http-password=_**password_
Specify the username _user_ and password _password_ on an HTTP server. According to the type
of the challenge, Wget will encode them using either the "basic" (insecure), the
"digest", or the Windows "NTLM" authentication scheme.
Another way to specify username and password is in the URL itself. Either method reveals
your password to anyone who bothers to run "ps". To prevent the passwords from being
seen, use the **--use-askpass **or store them in _.wgetrc_ or _.netrc_, and make sure to protect
those files from other users with "chmod". If the passwords are really important, do not
leave them lying in those files either---edit the files and delete them after Wget has
started the download.
### --no-http-keep-alive
Turn off the "keep-alive" feature for HTTP downloads. Normally, Wget asks the server to
keep the connection open so that, when you download more than one document from the same
server, they get transferred over the same TCP connection. This saves time and at the
same time reduces the load on the server.
This option is useful when, for some reason, persistent (keep-alive) connections don't
work for you, for example due to a server bug or due to the inability of server-side
scripts to cope with the connections.
### --no-cache
Disable server-side cache. In this case, Wget will send the remote server appropriate
directives (**Cache-Control: no-cache **and **Pragma: no-cache**) to get the file from the remote
service, rather than returning the cached version. This is especially useful for
retrieving and flushing out-of-date documents on proxy servers.
Caching is allowed by default.
### --no-cookies
Disable the use of cookies. Cookies are a mechanism for maintaining server-side state.
The server sends the client a cookie using the "Set-Cookie" header, and the client
responds with the same cookie upon further requests. Since cookies allow the server
owners to keep track of visitors and for sites to exchange this information, some
consider them a breach of privacy. The default is to use cookies; however, _storing_
cookies is not on by default.
**--load-cookies _**file_
Load cookies from _file_ before the first HTTP retrieval. _file_ is a textual file in the
format originally used by Netscape's _cookies.txt_ file.
You will typically use this option when mirroring sites that require that you be logged
in to access some or all of their content. The login process typically works by the web
server issuing an HTTP cookie upon receiving and verifying your credentials. The cookie
is then resent by the browser when accessing that part of the site, and so proves your
identity.
Mirroring such a site requires Wget to send the same cookies your browser sends when
communicating with the site. This is achieved by **--load-cookies**---simply point Wget to
the location of the _cookies.txt_ file, and it will send the same cookies your browser
would send in the same situation. Different browsers keep textual cookie files in
different locations:
"Netscape 4.x."
The cookies are in _~/.netscape/cookies.txt_.
"Mozilla and Netscape 6.x."
Mozilla's cookie file is also named _cookies.txt_, located somewhere under _~/.mozilla_,
in the directory of your profile. The full path usually ends up looking somewhat
like _~/.mozilla/default/some-weird-string/cookies.txt_.
"Internet Explorer."
You can produce a cookie file Wget can use by using the File menu, Import and Export,
Export Cookies. This has been tested with Internet Explorer 5; it is not guaranteed
to work with earlier versions.
"Other browsers."
If you are using a different browser to create your cookies, **--load-cookies **will only
work if you can locate or produce a cookie file in the Netscape format that Wget
expects.
If you cannot use **--load-cookies**, there might still be an alternative. If your browser
supports a "cookie manager", you can use it to view the cookies used when accessing the
site you're mirroring. Write down the name and value of the cookie, and manually
instruct Wget to send those cookies, bypassing the "official" cookie support:
wget --no-cookies --header "Cookie: ="
**--save-cookies _**file_
Save cookies to _file_ before exiting. This will not save cookies that have expired or
that have no expiry time (so-called "session cookies"), but also see
**--keep-session-cookies**.
### --keep-session-cookies
When specified, causes **--save-cookies **to also save session cookies. Session cookies are
normally not saved because they are meant to be kept in memory and forgotten when you
exit the browser. Saving them is useful on sites that require you to log in or to visit
the home page before you can access some pages. With this option, multiple Wget runs are
considered a single browser session as far as the site is concerned.
Since the cookie file format does not normally carry session cookies, Wget marks them
with an expiry timestamp of 0. Wget's **--load-cookies **recognizes those as session
cookies, but it might confuse other browsers. Also note that cookies so loaded will be
treated as other session cookies, which means that if you want **--save-cookies **to preserve
them again, you must use **--keep-session-cookies **again.
### --ignore-length
Unfortunately, some HTTP servers (CGI programs, to be more precise) send out bogus
"Content-Length" headers, which makes Wget go wild, as it thinks not all the document was
retrieved. You can spot this syndrome if Wget retries getting the same document again
and again, each time claiming that the (otherwise normal) connection has closed on the
very same byte.
With this option, Wget will ignore the "Content-Length" header---as if it never existed.
**--header=_**header-line_
Send _header-line_ along with the rest of the headers in each HTTP request. The supplied
header is sent as-is, which means it must contain name and value separated by colon, and
must not contain newlines.
You may define more than one additional header by specifying **--header **more than once.
wget --header='Accept-Charset: iso-8859-2' \
--header='Accept-Language: hr' \
Specification of an empty string as the header value will clear all previous user-defined
headers.
As of Wget 1.10, this option can be used to override headers otherwise generated
automatically. This example instructs Wget to connect to localhost, but to specify
**foo.bar **in the "Host" header:
wget --header="Host: foo.bar"
In versions of Wget prior to 1.10 such use of **--header **caused sending of duplicate
headers.
**--compression=_**type_
Choose the type of compression to be used. Legal values are **auto**, **gzip **and **none**.
If **auto **or **gzip **are specified, Wget asks the server to compress the file using the gzip
compression format. If the server compresses the file and responds with the
"Content-Encoding" header field set appropriately, the file will be decompressed
automatically.
If **none **is specified, wget will not ask the server to compress the file and will not
decompress any server responses. This is the default.
Compression support is currently experimental. In case it is turned on, please report any
bugs to "".
**--max-redirect=_**number_
Specifies the maximum number of redirections to follow for a resource. The default is
20, which is usually far more than necessary. However, on those occasions where you want
to allow more (or fewer), this is the option to use.
**--proxy-user=_**user_
**--proxy-password=_**password_
Specify the username _user_ and password _password_ for authentication on a proxy server.
Wget will encode them using the "basic" authentication scheme.
Security considerations similar to those with **--http-password **pertain here as well.
**--referer=_**url_
Include `Referer: _url_' header in HTTP request. Useful for retrieving documents with
server-side processing that assume they are always being retrieved by interactive web
browsers and only come out properly when Referer is set to one of the pages that point to
them.
### --save-headers
Save the headers sent by the HTTP server to the file, preceding the actual contents, with
an empty line as the separator.
### -U _
**--user-agent=_**agent-string_
Identify as _agent-string_ to the HTTP server.
The HTTP protocol allows the clients to identify themselves using a "User-Agent" header
field. This enables distinguishing the WWW software, usually for statistical purposes or
for tracing of protocol violations. Wget normally identifies as **Wget/_**version_, _version_
being the current version number of Wget.
However, some sites have been known to impose the policy of tailoring the output
according to the "User-Agent"-supplied information. While this is not such a bad idea in
theory, it has been abused by servers denying information to clients other than
(historically) Netscape or, more frequently, Microsoft Internet Explorer. This option
allows you to change the "User-Agent" line issued by Wget. Use of this option is
discouraged, unless you really know what you are doing.
Specifying empty user agent with **--user-agent="" **instructs Wget not to send the
"User-Agent" header in HTTP requests.
**--post-data=_**string_
**--post-file=_**file_
Use POST as the method for all HTTP requests and send the specified data in the request
body. **--post-data **sends _string_ as data, whereas **--post-file **sends the contents of _file_.
Other than that, they work in exactly the same way. In particular, they _both_ expect
content of the form "key1=value1&key2=value2", with percent-encoding for special
characters; the only difference is that one expects its content as a command-line
parameter and the other accepts its content from a file. In particular, **--post-file **is
_not_ for transmitting files as form attachments: those must appear as "key=value" data
(with appropriate percent-coding) just like everything else. Wget does not currently
support "multipart/form-data" for transmitting POST data; only
"application/x-www-form-urlencoded". Only one of **--post-data **and **--post-file **should be
specified.
Please note that wget does not require the content to be of the form
"key1=value1&key2=value2", and neither does it test for it. Wget will simply transmit
whatever data is provided to it. Most servers however expect the POST data to be in the
above format when processing HTML Forms.
When sending a POST request using the **--post-file **option, Wget treats the file as a
binary file and will send every character in the POST request without stripping trailing
newline or formfeed characters. Any other control characters in the text will also be
sent as-is in the POST request.
Please be aware that Wget needs to know the size of the POST data in advance. Therefore
the argument to "--post-file" must be a regular file; specifying a FIFO or something like
_/dev/stdin_ won't work. It's not quite clear how to work around this limitation inherent
in HTTP/1.0. Although HTTP/1.1 introduces _chunked_ transfer that doesn't require knowing
the request length in advance, a client can't use chunked unless it knows it's talking to
an HTTP/1.1 server. And it can't know that until it receives a response, which in turn
requires the request to have been completed -- a chicken-and-egg problem.
Note: As of version 1.15 if Wget is redirected after the POST request is completed, its
behaviour will depend on the response code returned by the server. In case of a 301
Moved Permanently, 302 Moved Temporarily or 307 Temporary Redirect, Wget will, in
accordance with RFC2616, continue to send a POST request. In case a server wants the
client to change the Request method upon redirection, it should send a 303 See Other
response code.
This example shows how to log in to a server using POST and then proceed to download the
desired pages, presumably only accessible to authorized users:
# Log in to the server. This can be done only once.
wget --save-cookies cookies.txt \
--post-data 'user=foo&password=bar' \
# Now grab the page or pages we care about.
wget --load-cookies cookies.txt \
-p
If the server is using session cookies to track user authentication, the above will not
work because **--save-cookies **will not save them (and neither will browsers) and the
_cookies.txt_ file will be empty. In that case use **--keep-session-cookies **along with
**--save-cookies **to force saving of session cookies.
**--method=_**HTTP-Method_
For the purpose of RESTful scripting, Wget allows sending of other HTTP Methods without
the need to explicitly set them using **--header=Header-Line**. Wget will use whatever
string is passed to it after **--method **as the HTTP Method to the server.
**--body-data=_**Data-String_
**--body-file=_**Data-File_
Must be set when additional data needs to be sent to the server along with the Method
specified using **--method**. **--body-data **sends _string_ as data, whereas **--body-file **sends
the contents of _file_. Other than that, they work in exactly the same way.
Currently, **--body-file **is _not_ for transmitting files as a whole. Wget does not currently
support "multipart/form-data" for transmitting data; only
"application/x-www-form-urlencoded". In the future, this may be changed so that wget
sends the **--body-file **as a complete file instead of sending its contents to the server.
Please be aware that Wget needs to know the contents of BODY Data in advance, and hence
the argument to **--body-file **should be a regular file. See **--post-file **for a more detailed
explanation. Only one of **--body-data **and **--body-file **should be specified.
If Wget is redirected after the request is completed, Wget will suspend the current
method and send a GET request till the redirection is completed. This is true for all
redirection response codes except 307 Temporary Redirect which is used to explicitly
specify that the request method should _not_ change. Another exception is when the method
is set to "POST", in which case the redirection rules specified under **--post-data **are
followed.
### --content-disposition
If this is set to on, experimental (not fully-functional) support for
"Content-Disposition" headers is enabled. This can currently result in extra round-trips
to the server for a "HEAD" request, and is known to suffer from a few bugs, which is why
it is not currently enabled by default.
This option is useful for some file-downloading CGI programs that use
"Content-Disposition" headers to describe what the name of a downloaded file should be.
When combined with **--metalink-over-http **and **--trust-server-names**, a **Content-Type:**
**application/metalink4+xml **file is named using the "Content-Disposition" filename field,
if available.
### --content-on-error
If this is set to on, wget will not skip the content when the server responds with a http
status code that indicates error.
### --trust-server-names
If this is set, on a redirect, the local file name will be based on the redirection URL.
By default the local file name is based on the original URL. When doing recursive
retrieving this can be helpful because in many web sites redirected URLs correspond to an
underlying file structure, while link URLs do not.
### --auth-no-challenge
If this option is given, Wget will send Basic HTTP authentication information (plaintext
username and password) for all requests, just like Wget 1.10.2 and prior did by default.
Use of this option is not recommended, and is intended only to support some few obscure
servers, which never send HTTP authentication challenges, but accept unsolicited auth
info, say, in addition to form-based authentication.
### --retry-on-host-error
Consider host errors, such as "Temporary failure in name resolution", as non-fatal,
transient errors.
**--retry-on-http-error=_**code[,code,...]_
Consider given HTTP response codes as non-fatal, transient errors. Supply a comma-
separated list of 3-digit HTTP response codes as argument. Useful to work around special
circumstances where retries are required, but the server responds with an error code
normally not retried by Wget. Such errors might be 503 (Service Unavailable) and 429 (Too
Many Requests). Retries enabled by this option are performed subject to the normal retry
timing and retry count limitations of Wget.
Using this option is intended to support special use cases only and is generally not
recommended, as it can force retries even in cases where the server is actually trying to
decrease its load. Please use wisely and only if you know what you are doing.
### HTTPS (SSL/TLS) Options
To support encrypted HTTP (HTTPS) downloads, Wget must be compiled with an external SSL
library. The current default is GnuTLS. In addition, Wget also supports HSTS (HTTP Strict
Transport Security). If Wget is compiled without SSL support, none of these options are
available.
**--secure-protocol=_**protocol_
Choose the secure protocol to be used. Legal values are **auto**, **SSLv2**, **SSLv3**, **TLSv1**,
**TLSv1_1**, **TLSv1_2**, **TLSv1_3 **and **PFS**. If **auto **is used, the SSL library is given the liberty
of choosing the appropriate protocol automatically, which is achieved by sending a TLSv1
greeting. This is the default.
Specifying **SSLv2**, **SSLv3**, **TLSv1**, **TLSv1_1**, **TLSv1_2 **or **TLSv1_3 **forces the use of the
corresponding protocol. This is useful when talking to old and buggy SSL server
implementations that make it hard for the underlying SSL library to choose the correct
protocol version. Fortunately, such servers are quite rare.
Specifying **PFS **enforces the use of the so-called Perfect Forward Security cipher suites.
In short, PFS adds security by creating a one-time key for each SSL connection. It has a
bit more CPU impact on client and server. We use known to be secure ciphers (e.g. no
MD4) and the TLS protocol. This mode also explicitly excludes non-PFS key exchange
methods, such as RSA.
### --https-only
When in recursive mode, only HTTPS links are followed.
### --ciphers
Set the cipher list string. Typically this string sets the cipher suites and other
SSL/TLS options that the user wish should be used, in a set order of preference (GnuTLS
calls it 'priority string'). This string will be fed verbatim to the SSL/TLS engine
(OpenSSL or GnuTLS) and hence its format and syntax is dependent on that. Wget will not
process or manipulate it in any way. Refer to the OpenSSL or GnuTLS documentation for
more information.
### --no-check-certificate
Don't check the server certificate against the available certificate authorities. Also
don't require the URL host name to match the common name presented by the certificate.
As of Wget 1.10, the default is to verify the server's certificate against the recognized
certificate authorities, breaking the SSL handshake and aborting the download if the
verification fails. Although this provides more secure downloads, it does break
interoperability with some sites that worked with previous Wget versions, particularly
those using self-signed, expired, or otherwise invalid certificates. This option forces
an "insecure" mode of operation that turns the certificate verification errors into
warnings and allows you to proceed.
If you encounter "certificate verification" errors or ones saying that "common name
doesn't match requested host name", you can use this option to bypass the verification
and proceed with the download. _Only_ _use_ _this_ _option_ _if_ _you_ _are_ _otherwise_ _convinced_ _of_
_the_ _site's_ _authenticity,_ _or_ _if_ _you_ _really_ _don't_ _care_ _about_ _the_ _validity_ _of_ _its_
_certificate._ It is almost always a bad idea not to check the certificates when
transmitting confidential or important data. For self-signed/internal certificates, you
should download the certificate and verify against that instead of forcing this insecure
mode. If you are really sure of not desiring any certificate verification, you can
specify --check-certificate=quiet to tell wget to not print any warning about invalid
certificates, albeit in most cases this is the wrong thing to do.
**--certificate=_**file_
Use the client certificate stored in _file_. This is needed for servers that are
configured to require certificates from the clients that connect to them. Normally a
certificate is not required and this switch is optional.
**--certificate-type=_**type_
Specify the type of the client certificate. Legal values are **PEM **(assumed by default)
and **DER**, also known as **ASN1**.
**--private-key=_**file_
Read the private key from _file_. This allows you to provide the private key in a file
separate from the certificate.
**--private-key-type=_**type_
Specify the type of the private key. Accepted values are **PEM **(the default) and **DER**.
**--ca-certificate=_**file_
Use _file_ as the file with the bundle of certificate authorities ("CA") to verify the
peers. The certificates must be in PEM format.
Without this option Wget looks for CA certificates at the system-specified locations,
chosen at OpenSSL installation time.
**--ca-directory=_**directory_
Specifies directory containing CA certificates in PEM format. Each file contains one CA
certificate, and the file name is based on a hash value derived from the certificate.
This is achieved by processing a certificate directory with the "c_rehash" utility
supplied with OpenSSL. Using **--ca-directory **is more efficient than **--ca-certificate **when
many certificates are installed because it allows Wget to fetch certificates on demand.
Without this option Wget looks for CA certificates at the system-specified locations,
chosen at OpenSSL installation time.
**--crl-file=_**file_
Specifies a CRL file in _file_. This is needed for certificates that have been revocated
by the CAs.
### --pinnedpubkey=file/hashes
Tells wget to use the specified public key file (or hashes) to verify the peer. This can
be a path to a file which contains a single public key in PEM or DER format, or any
number of base64 encoded sha256 hashes preceded by "sha256//" and separated by ";"
When negotiating a TLS or SSL connection, the server sends a certificate indicating its
identity. A public key is extracted from this certificate and if it does not exactly
match the public key(s) provided to this option, wget will abort the connection before
sending or receiving any data.
**--random-file=_**file_
[OpenSSL and LibreSSL only] Use _file_ as the source of random data for seeding the pseudo-
random number generator on systems without _/dev/urandom_.
On such systems the SSL library needs an external source of randomness to initialize.
Randomness may be provided by EGD (see **--egd-file **below) or read from an external source
specified by the user. If this option is not specified, Wget looks for random data in
$RANDFILE or, if that is unset, in _$HOME/.rnd_.
If you're getting the "Could not seed OpenSSL PRNG; disabling SSL." error, you should
provide random data using some of the methods described above.
**--egd-file=_**file_
[OpenSSL only] Use _file_ as the EGD socket. EGD stands for _Entropy_ _Gathering_ _Daemon_, a
user-space program that collects data from various unpredictable system sources and makes
it available to other programs that might need it. Encryption software, such as the SSL
library, needs sources of non-repeating randomness to seed the random number generator
used to produce cryptographically strong keys.
OpenSSL allows the user to specify his own source of entropy using the "RAND_FILE"
environment variable. If this variable is unset, or if the specified file does not
produce enough randomness, OpenSSL will read random data from EGD socket specified using
this option.
If this option is not specified (and the equivalent startup command is not used), EGD is
never contacted. EGD is not needed on modern Unix systems that support _/dev/urandom_.
### --no-hsts
Wget supports HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security, RFC 6797) by default. Use **--no-hsts**
to make Wget act as a non-HSTS-compliant UA. As a consequence, Wget would ignore all the
"Strict-Transport-Security" headers, and would not enforce any existing HSTS policy.
**--hsts-file=_**file_
By default, Wget stores its HSTS database in _~/.wget-hsts_. You can use **--hsts-file **to
override this. Wget will use the supplied file as the HSTS database. Such file must
conform to the correct HSTS database format used by Wget. If Wget cannot parse the
provided file, the behaviour is unspecified.
The Wget's HSTS database is a plain text file. Each line contains an HSTS entry (ie. a
site that has issued a "Strict-Transport-Security" header and that therefore has
specified a concrete HSTS policy to be applied). Lines starting with a dash ("#") are
ignored by Wget. Please note that in spite of this convenient human-readability hand-
hacking the HSTS database is generally not a good idea.
An HSTS entry line consists of several fields separated by one or more whitespace:
" SP [] SP SP SP "
The _hostname_ and _port_ fields indicate the hostname and port to which the given HSTS
policy applies. The _port_ field may be zero, and it will, in most of the cases. That means
that the port number will not be taken into account when deciding whether such HSTS
policy should be applied on a given request (only the hostname will be evaluated). When
_port_ is different to zero, both the target hostname and the port will be evaluated and
the HSTS policy will only be applied if both of them match. This feature has been
included for testing/development purposes only. The Wget testsuite (in _testenv/_) creates
HSTS databases with explicit ports with the purpose of ensuring Wget's correct behaviour.
Applying HSTS policies to ports other than the default ones is discouraged by RFC 6797
(see Appendix B "Differences between HSTS Policy and Same-Origin Policy"). Thus, this
functionality should not be used in production environments and _port_ will typically be
zero. The last three fields do what they are expected to. The field _include_subdomains_
can either be 1 or 0 and it signals whether the subdomains of the target domain should be
part of the given HSTS policy as well. The _created_ and _max-age_ fields hold the timestamp
values of when such entry was created (first seen by Wget) and the HSTS-defined value
'max-age', which states how long should that HSTS policy remain active, measured in
seconds elapsed since the timestamp stored in _created_. Once that time has passed, that
HSTS policy will no longer be valid and will eventually be removed from the database.
If you supply your own HSTS database via **--hsts-file**, be aware that Wget may modify the
provided file if any change occurs between the HSTS policies requested by the remote
servers and those in the file. When Wget exits, it effectively updates the HSTS database
by rewriting the database file with the new entries.
If the supplied file does not exist, Wget will create one. This file will contain the new
HSTS entries. If no HSTS entries were generated (no "Strict-Transport-Security" headers
were sent by any of the servers) then no file will be created, not even an empty one.
This behaviour applies to the default database file (_~/.wget-hsts_) as well: it will not
be created until some server enforces an HSTS policy.
Care is taken not to override possible changes made by other Wget processes at the same
time over the HSTS database. Before dumping the updated HSTS entries on the file, Wget
will re-read it and merge the changes.
Using a custom HSTS database and/or modifying an existing one is discouraged. For more
information about the potential security threats arose from such practice, see section 14
"Security Considerations" of RFC 6797, specially section 14.9 "Creative Manipulation of
HSTS Policy Store".
**--warc-file=_**file_
Use _file_ as the destination WARC file.
**--warc-header=_**string_
Use _string_ into as the warcinfo record.
**--warc-max-size=_**size_
Set the maximum size of the WARC files to _size_.
### --warc-cdx
Write CDX index files.
**--warc-dedup=_**file_
Do not store records listed in this CDX file.
### --no-warc-compression
Do not compress WARC files with GZIP.
### --no-warc-digests
Do not calculate SHA1 digests.
### --no-warc-keep-log
Do not store the log file in a WARC record.
**--warc-tempdir=_**dir_
Specify the location for temporary files created by the WARC writer.
### FTP Options
**--ftp-user=_**user_
**--ftp-password=_**password_
Specify the username _user_ and password _password_ on an FTP server. Without this, or the
corresponding startup option, the password defaults to **-wget@**, normally used for
anonymous FTP.
Another way to specify username and password is in the URL itself. Either method reveals
your password to anyone who bothers to run "ps". To prevent the passwords from being
seen, store them in _.wgetrc_ or _.netrc_, and make sure to protect those files from other
users with "chmod". If the passwords are really important, do not leave them lying in
those files either---edit the files and delete them after Wget has started the download.
### --no-remove-listing
Don't remove the temporary _.listing_ files generated by FTP retrievals. Normally, these
files contain the raw directory listings received from FTP servers. Not removing them
can be useful for debugging purposes, or when you want to be able to easily check on the
contents of remote server directories (e.g. to verify that a mirror you're running is
complete).
Note that even though Wget writes to a known filename for this file, this is not a
security hole in the scenario of a user making _.listing_ a symbolic link to _/etc/passwd_ or
something and asking "root" to run Wget in his or her directory. Depending on the
options used, either Wget will refuse to write to _.listing_, making the
globbing/recursion/time-stamping operation fail, or the symbolic link will be deleted and
replaced with the actual _.listing_ file, or the listing will be written to a
_.listing.number_ file.
Even though this situation isn't a problem, though, "root" should never run Wget in a
non-trusted user's directory. A user could do something as simple as linking _index.html_
to _/etc/passwd_ and asking "root" to run Wget with **-N **or **-r **so the file will be
overwritten.
### --no-glob
Turn off FTP globbing. Globbing refers to the use of shell-like special characters
(_wildcards_), like *****, **?**, **[ **and **] **to retrieve more than one file from the same directory at
once, like:
wget ftp://gnjilux.srk.fer.hr/*.msg
By default, globbing will be turned on if the URL contains a globbing character. This
option may be used to turn globbing on or off permanently.
You may have to quote the URL to protect it from being expanded by your shell. Globbing
makes Wget look for a directory listing, which is system-specific. This is why it
currently works only with Unix FTP servers (and the ones emulating Unix "ls" output).
### --no-passive-ftp
Disable the use of the _passive_ FTP transfer mode. Passive FTP mandates that the client
connect to the server to establish the data connection rather than the other way around.
If the machine is connected to the Internet directly, both passive and active FTP should
work equally well. Behind most firewall and NAT configurations passive FTP has a better
chance of working. However, in some rare firewall configurations, active FTP actually
works when passive FTP doesn't. If you suspect this to be the case, use this option, or
set "passive_ftp=off" in your init file.
### --preserve-permissions
Preserve remote file permissions instead of permissions set by umask.
### --retr-symlinks
By default, when retrieving FTP directories recursively and a symbolic link is
encountered, the symbolic link is traversed and the pointed-to files are retrieved.
Currently, Wget does not traverse symbolic links to directories to download them
recursively, though this feature may be added in the future.
When **--retr-symlinks=no **is specified, the linked-to file is not downloaded. Instead, a
matching symbolic link is created on the local file system. The pointed-to file will not
be retrieved unless this recursive retrieval would have encountered it separately and
downloaded it anyway. This option poses a security risk where a malicious FTP Server may
cause Wget to write to files outside of the intended directories through a specially
crafted .LISTING file.
Note that when retrieving a file (not a directory) because it was specified on the
command-line, rather than because it was recursed to, this option has no effect.
Symbolic links are always traversed in this case.
### FTPS Options
### --ftps-implicit
This option tells Wget to use FTPS implicitly. Implicit FTPS consists of initializing
SSL/TLS from the very beginning of the control connection. This option does not send an
"AUTH TLS" command: it assumes the server speaks FTPS and directly starts an SSL/TLS
connection. If the attempt is successful, the session continues just like regular FTPS
("PBSZ" and "PROT" are sent, etc.). Implicit FTPS is no longer a requirement for FTPS
implementations, and thus many servers may not support it. If **--ftps-implicit **is passed
and no explicit port number specified, the default port for implicit FTPS, 990, will be
used, instead of the default port for the "normal" (explicit) FTPS which is the same as
that of FTP, 21.
### --no-ftps-resume-ssl
Do not resume the SSL/TLS session in the data channel. When starting a data connection,
Wget tries to resume the SSL/TLS session previously started in the control connection.
SSL/TLS session resumption avoids performing an entirely new handshake by reusing the
SSL/TLS parameters of a previous session. Typically, the FTPS servers want it that way,
so Wget does this by default. Under rare circumstances however, one might want to start
an entirely new SSL/TLS session in every data connection. This is what
**--no-ftps-resume-ssl **is for.
### --ftps-clear-data-connection
All the data connections will be in plain text. Only the control connection will be under
SSL/TLS. Wget will send a "PROT C" command to achieve this, which must be approved by the
server.
### --ftps-fallback-to-ftp
Fall back to FTP if FTPS is not supported by the target server. For security reasons,
this option is not asserted by default. The default behaviour is to exit with an error.
If a server does not successfully reply to the initial "AUTH TLS" command, or in the case
of implicit FTPS, if the initial SSL/TLS connection attempt is rejected, it is considered
that such server does not support FTPS.
### Recursive Retrieval Options
### -r
### --recursive
Turn on recursive retrieving. The default maximum depth is 5.
### -l _
**--level=_**depth_
Set the maximum number of subdirectories that Wget will recurse into to _depth_. In order
to prevent one from accidentally downloading very large websites when using recursion
this is limited to a depth of 5 by default, i.e., it will traverse at most 5 directories
deep starting from the provided URL. Set **-l 0 **or **-l inf **for infinite recursion depth.
wget -r -l 0 http:///1.html
Ideally, one would expect this to download just _1.html_. but unfortunately this is not
the case, because **-l 0 **is equivalent to **-l inf**---that is, infinite recursion. To
download a single HTML page (or a handful of them), specify them all on the command line
and leave away **-r **and **-l**. To download the essential items to view a single HTML page, see
**page requisites**.
### --delete-after
This option tells Wget to delete every single file it downloads, _after_ having done so.
It is useful for pre-fetching popular pages through a proxy, e.g.:
wget -r -nd --delete-after
The **-r **option is to retrieve recursively, and **-nd **to not create directories.
Note that **--delete-after **deletes files on the local machine. It does not issue the **DELE**
command to remote FTP sites, for instance. Also note that when **--delete-after **is
specified, **--convert-links **is ignored, so **.orig **files are simply not created in the first
place.
### -k
### --convert-links
After the download is complete, convert the links in the document to make them suitable
for local viewing. This affects not only the visible hyperlinks, but any part of the
document that links to external content, such as embedded images, links to style sheets,
hyperlinks to non-HTML content, etc.
Each link will be changed in one of the two ways:
• The links to files that have been downloaded by Wget will be changed to refer to the
file they point to as a relative link.
Example: if the downloaded file _/foo/doc.html_ links to _/bar/img.gif_, also downloaded,
then the link in _doc.html_ will be modified to point to **../bar/img.gif**. This kind of
transformation works reliably for arbitrary combinations of directories.
• The links to files that have not been downloaded by Wget will be changed to include
host name and absolute path of the location they point to.
Example: if the downloaded file _/foo/doc.html_ links to _/bar/img.gif_ (or to
_../bar/img.gif_), then the link in _doc.html_ will be modified to point to
_.
Because of this, local browsing works reliably: if a linked file was downloaded, the link
will refer to its local name; if it was not downloaded, the link will refer to its full
Internet address rather than presenting a broken link. The fact that the former links
are converted to relative links ensures that you can move the downloaded hierarchy to
another directory.
Note that only at the end of the download can Wget know which links have been downloaded.
Because of that, the work done by **-k **will be performed at the end of all the downloads.
### --convert-file-only
This option converts only the filename part of the URLs, leaving the rest of the URLs
untouched. This filename part is sometimes referred to as the "basename", although we
avoid that term here in order not to cause confusion.
It works particularly well in conjunction with **--adjust-extension**, although this coupling
is not enforced. It proves useful to populate Internet caches with files downloaded from
different hosts.
Example: if some link points to _//foo.com/bar.cgi?xyz_ with **--adjust-extension **asserted
and its local destination is intended to be _./foo.com/bar.cgi?xyz.css_, then the link
would be converted to _//foo.com/bar.cgi?xyz.css_. Note that only the filename part has
been modified. The rest of the URL has been left untouched, including the net path ("//")
which would otherwise be processed by Wget and converted to the effective scheme (ie.
"http://").
### -K
### --backup-converted
When converting a file, back up the original version with a **.orig **suffix. Affects the
behavior of **-N**.
### -m
### --mirror
Turn on options suitable for mirroring. This option turns on recursion and time-
stamping, sets infinite recursion depth and keeps FTP directory listings. It is
currently equivalent to **-r -N -l inf --no-remove-listing**.
### -p
### --page-requisites
This option causes Wget to download all the files that are necessary to properly display
a given HTML page. This includes such things as inlined images, sounds, and referenced
stylesheets.
Ordinarily, when downloading a single HTML page, any requisite documents that may be
needed to display it properly are not downloaded. Using **-r **together with **-l **can help,
but since Wget does not ordinarily distinguish between external and inlined documents,
one is generally left with "leaf documents" that are missing their requisites.
For instance, say document _1.html_ contains an "" tag referencing _1.gif_ and an ""
tag pointing to external document _2.html_. Say that _2.html_ is similar but that its image
is _2.gif_ and it links to _3.html_. Say this continues up to some arbitrarily high number.
If one executes the command:
wget -r -l 2 http:///1.html
then _1.html_, _1.gif_, _2.html_, _2.gif_, and _3.html_ will be downloaded. As you can see, _3.html_
is without its requisite _3.gif_ because Wget is simply counting the number of hops (up to
2) away from _1.html_ in order to determine where to stop the recursion. However, with
this command:
wget -r -l 2 -p http:///1.html
all the above files _and_ _3.html_'s requisite _3.gif_ will be downloaded. Similarly,
wget -r -l 1 -p http:///1.html
will cause _1.html_, _1.gif_, _2.html_, and _2.gif_ to be downloaded. One might think that:
wget -r -l 0 -p http:///1.html
would download just _1.html_ and _1.gif_, but unfortunately this is not the case, because **-l**
**0 **is equivalent to **-l inf**---that is, infinite recursion. To download a single HTML page
(or a handful of them, all specified on the command-line or in a **-i **URL input file) and
its (or their) requisites, simply leave off **-r **and **-l**:
wget -p http:///1.html
Note that Wget will behave as if **-r **had been specified, but only that single page and its
requisites will be downloaded. Links from that page to external documents will not be
followed. Actually, to download a single page and all its requisites (even if they exist
on separate websites), and make sure the lot displays properly locally, this author likes
to use a few options in addition to **-p**:
wget -E -H -k -K -p http:///
To finish off this topic, it's worth knowing that Wget's idea of an external document
link is any URL specified in an "" tag, an "" tag, or a "" tag other than
"".
### --strict-comments
Turn on strict parsing of HTML comments. The default is to terminate comments at the
first occurrence of **-->**.
According to specifications, HTML comments are expressed as SGML _declarations_.
Declaration is special markup that begins with ****, such as ****, that may contain comments between a pair of **-- **delimiters. HTML comments are
"empty declarations", SGML declarations without any non-comment text. Therefore,
** **is a valid comment, and so is ****, but ** **is not.
On the other hand, most HTML writers don't perceive comments as anything other than text
delimited with ****, which is not quite the same. For example, something like
** **works as a valid comment as long as the number of dashes is a multiple of
four (!). If not, the comment technically lasts until the next **--**, which may be at the
other end of the document. Because of this, many popular browsers completely ignore the
specification and implement what users have come to expect: comments delimited with ****.
Until version 1.9, Wget interpreted comments strictly, which resulted in missing links in
many web pages that displayed fine in browsers, but had the misfortune of containing non-
compliant comments. Beginning with version 1.9, Wget has joined the ranks of clients
that implements "naive" comments, terminating each comment at the first occurrence of
**-->**.
If, for whatever reason, you want strict comment parsing, use this option to turn it on.
### Recursive Accept/Reject Options
### -A _ --accept _
### -R _ --reject _
Specify comma-separated lists of file name suffixes or patterns to accept or reject. Note
that if any of the wildcard characters, *****, **?**, **[ **or **]**, appear in an element of _acclist_ or
_rejlist_, it will be treated as a pattern, rather than a suffix. In this case, you have
to enclose the pattern into quotes to prevent your shell from expanding it, like in **-A**
**"*.mp3" **or **-A '*.mp3'**.
**--accept-regex _**urlregex_
**--reject-regex _**urlregex_
Specify a regular expression to accept or reject the complete URL.
**--regex-type _**regextype_
Specify the regular expression type. Possible types are **posix **or **pcre**. Note that to be
able to use **pcre **type, wget has to be compiled with libpcre support.
### -D _
**--domains=_**domain-list_
Set domains to be followed. _domain-list_ is a comma-separated list of domains. Note that
it does _not_ turn on **-H**.
**--exclude-domains _**domain-list_
Specify the domains that are _not_ to be followed.
### --follow-ftp
Follow FTP links from HTML documents. Without this option, Wget will ignore all the FTP
links.
**--follow-tags=_**list_
Wget has an internal table of HTML tag / attribute pairs that it considers when looking
for linked documents during a recursive retrieval. If a user wants only a subset of
those tags to be considered, however, he or she should be specify such tags in a comma-
separated _list_ with this option.
**--ignore-tags=_**list_
This is the opposite of the **--follow-tags **option. To skip certain HTML tags when
recursively looking for documents to download, specify them in a comma-separated _list_.
In the past, this option was the best bet for downloading a single page and its
requisites, using a command-line like:
wget --ignore-tags=a,area -H -k -K -r http:///
However, the author of this option came across a page with tags like "" and came to the realization that specifying tags to ignore was not enough.
One can't just tell Wget to ignore "", because then stylesheets will not be
downloaded. Now the best bet for downloading a single page and its requisites is the
dedicated **--page-requisites **option.
### --ignore-case
Ignore case when matching files and directories. This influences the behavior of -R, -A,
-I, and -X options, as well as globbing implemented when downloading from FTP sites. For
example, with this option, **-A "*.txt" **will match **file1.txt**, but also **file2.TXT**,
**file3.TxT**, and so on. The quotes in the example are to prevent the shell from expanding
the pattern.
### -H
### --span-hosts
Enable spanning across hosts when doing recursive retrieving.
### -L
### --relative
Follow relative links only. Useful for retrieving a specific home page without any
distractions, not even those from the same hosts.
### -I _
**--include-directories=_**list_
Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to follow when downloading.
Elements of _list_ may contain wildcards.
### -X _
**--exclude-directories=_**list_
Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to exclude from download.
Elements of _list_ may contain wildcards.
### -np
### --no-parent
Do not ever ascend to the parent directory when retrieving recursively. This is a useful
option, since it guarantees that only the files _below_ a certain hierarchy will be
downloaded.
## ENVIRONMENT
Wget supports proxies for both HTTP and FTP retrievals. The standard way to specify proxy
location, which Wget recognizes, is using the following environment variables:
### http_proxy
### https_proxy
If set, the **http_proxy **and **https_proxy **variables should contain the URLs of the proxies
for HTTP and HTTPS connections respectively.
### ftp_proxy
This variable should contain the URL of the proxy for FTP connections. It is quite
common that **http_proxy **and **ftp_proxy **are set to the same URL.
### no_proxy
This variable should contain a comma-separated list of domain extensions proxy should _not_
be used for. For instance, if the value of **no_proxy **is **.mit.edu**, proxy will not be used
to retrieve documents from MIT.
## EXIT STATUS
Wget may return one of several error codes if it encounters problems.
0 No problems occurred.
1 Generic error code.
2 Parse error---for instance, when parsing command-line options, the **.wgetrc **or **.netrc**...
3 File I/O error.
4 Network failure.
5 SSL verification failure.
6 Username/password authentication failure.
7 Protocol errors.
8 Server issued an error response.
With the exceptions of 0 and 1, the lower-numbered exit codes take precedence over higher-
numbered ones, when multiple types of errors are encountered.
In versions of Wget prior to 1.12, Wget's exit status tended to be unhelpful and
inconsistent. Recursive downloads would virtually always return 0 (success), regardless of
any issues encountered, and non-recursive fetches only returned the status corresponding to
the most recently-attempted download.
## FILES
### /etc/wgetrc
Default location of the _global_ startup file.
### .wgetrc
User startup file.
## BUGS
You are welcome to submit bug reports via the GNU Wget bug tracker (see
<****>) or to our mailing list
<****>.
Visit <****> to get more info (how to subscribe,
list archives, ...).
Before actually submitting a bug report, please try to follow a few simple guidelines.
1. Please try to ascertain that the behavior you see really is a bug. If Wget crashes, it's
a bug. If Wget does not behave as documented, it's a bug. If things work strange, but
you are not sure about the way they are supposed to work, it might well be a bug, but you
might want to double-check the documentation and the mailing lists.
2. Try to repeat the bug in as simple circumstances as possible. E.g. if Wget crashes while
downloading **wget -rl0 -kKE -t5 --no-proxy -o /tmp/log**, you should try
to see if the crash is repeatable, and if will occur with a simpler set of options. You
might even try to start the download at the page where the crash occurred to see if that
page somehow triggered the crash.
Also, while I will probably be interested to know the contents of your _.wgetrc_ file, just
dumping it into the debug message is probably a bad idea. Instead, you should first try
to see if the bug repeats with _.wgetrc_ moved out of the way. Only if it turns out that
_.wgetrc_ settings affect the bug, mail me the relevant parts of the file.
3. Please start Wget with **-d **option and send us the resulting output (or relevant parts
thereof). If Wget was compiled without debug support, recompile it---it is _much_ easier
to trace bugs with debug support on.
Note: please make sure to remove any potentially sensitive information from the debug log
before sending it to the bug address. The "-d" won't go out of its way to collect
sensitive information, but the log _will_ contain a fairly complete transcript of Wget's
communication with the server, which may include passwords and pieces of downloaded data.
Since the bug address is publicly archived, you may assume that all bug reports are
visible to the public.
4. If Wget has crashed, try to run it in a debugger, e.g. "gdb `which wget` core" and type
"where" to get the backtrace. This may not work if the system administrator has disabled
core files, but it is safe to try.
## SEE ALSO
This is **not **the complete manual for GNU Wget. For more complete information, including more
detailed explanations of some of the options, and a number of commands available for use with
_.wgetrc_ files and the **-e **option, see the GNU Info entry for _wget_.
Also see [**wget2**(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/wget2/1/markdown), the updated version of GNU Wget with even better support for recursive
downloading and modern protocols like HTTP/2.
## AUTHOR
Originally written by Hrvoje Nikšić <>. Currently maintained by Darshit
Shah <> and Tim Rühsen <>.
## COPYRIGHT
Copyright (c) 1996--2011, 2015, 2018--2023 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the
GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free
Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-
Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free
Documentation License".
GNU Wget 1.21.4 2026-07-16 [_WGET_(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/WGET/1/markdown)